Saturday, November 6, 2010
Leaders in Education: Linda Darling Hammond
Linda Darling Hammond is a professor at Standford who has built a career on calling for social justice and equity of opportunity in American education. She is now an advisor to Barack Obama. She wrote a groundbreaking book, The Right to Learn, about a decade ago and her latest book is *The Flat World and Education . In this clip, she talks about how nations that perform well on PISA, an international test, have assessments that emphasize higher order thinking and inform teaching. Her talk signals a shift, in American education, from testing for accountability to assessment as part of the teaching process for developing 21st Century Skills. Notice that Darling-Hammond highlights some key differences between American systems and others, including ours - particularly the equity or inequity of school funding. This is important to consider when we read American authors and we need to decide whether their criticisms apply to teaching in Canada. However, Canada's high performance on international tests should not make us complacent: Darling-Hammond's work inspires us to ask whether our enviable education system is working as well as it could for impoverished and culturally marginalized students.
The Flat World and Education offers an eye-opening wake-up call concerning America's future and vividly illustrates what the United States needs to do to build a system of high-achieving and equitable schools that ensures every child the right to learn.
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I found this webcast very intriguing because I attended a workshop in Edmonton this past week on Performance Task Assessment. I believe this to be essential in a knowledge based society. In answer to the question are we supporting impoverished or culturally marginalized students to the best of our ability, I would argue that we are not. I argue this because there is no consistency in defining what the needs are to the curriculum or what is required from teachers in the form of practice. We have to overcome such barriers in all forms that it makes it very difficult to fully support these students. The difficulties arise from isolationists teachers all the way to government funding needed to support these students. There has to be a consistent knowledge base and understanding as an entire staff in school, it cannot be a single individual who will drive and carry out what needed. I truly became aware of this as I was sitting at the conference by myself with no one on staff to support me. It is essential to build connections to make supporting these students effecitve.
ReplyDeleteIn my school district some of the impetus to change has come from attending conferences or professional development centered on US based ideas for change. Many educators question whether we should do this as the US scores lower in the PISA / OECD education results (Science & Math to name two). They have put into place high stake tests that then shape the way learning occurs in their country. I think that these conferences and Pro-D are important because they stimulate discussions about what we are doing or looking at in the Canadian (or BC) educational system. BC ranks very high on the PISA education results. Where BC is potentially weak is the educational success rates of aboriginal students and students who classified as low social economic.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to see how the US political system has shaped their educational system. Dr. Darling-Hammond does give an insight into why or how other nations have achieved success in learning. Western Canada educational theory has been guided recently by both UK and Australian / New Zealand educators (Black and Wiliam, Timperley & Robinson). The Australian educational system has been changed / shaped due to dramatic changes in the funding for schools and the education system.
The key to improving student learning is enhancing what classroom teachers DO with students. How do they approach learning (ex, formative assessment)? Darling-Hammond correctly points out that the success (as measured by the PISA) is achieved by having teachers involved in developing and scoring in both centralized and classroom based tasks. This enables teachers to learn about the standards and how to teach to the standards. This establishes equity in the curriculum as teachers are all working around shared standards, ideas and tasks.
The leadership point of view here is to understand how to support teachers in the classroom. Education leadership means it is critical for administrators to be working with and supporting the development and implementation of current wise educational practices. It means we need to understand the continued need to improve but also realize what our system does that is successful.